Somehow, I Wound Up in the Wrong Gneration

This, via Andrew Sullivan, sort of nails my political philosophy:

Three quarters of Generation X agree with the statement "Our generation has an important voice, but no one seems to hear it." Whatever this voice may be, it does not fit comfortably within existing partisan camps. "The old left-right paradigm is not working anymore," according to the novelist Douglas Coupland, who coined the term "Generation X." Neil Howe and William Strauss, who have written extensively on generational issues, have argued in these pages that from the Generation X perspective "America's greatest need these days is to clear out the underbrush of name-calling and ideology so that simple things can work again."

To my way of thinking, the argument that the world has gotten too complex to be understood by most of us has one obvious counter-argument: simplify the world. And, as we've seen repeatedly over the past generation or two, ideology only gets in the way of governing. Please note that the first two presidents of my generation were Clinton and Bush II. What can I say, except to note that Clinton, whatever his personal failings, was not an ideologue and was a successful president; Bush, who has been much more ideological, has been a disaster.